Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov (russian: Алексе́й Ива́нович Ивано́в; ; 1878–1937) was a Russian
Sinologist
Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the ex ...
and
Tangutologist.
Biography
Ivanov entered
Saint Petersburg University
Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...
in 1897, where he studied
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
and
Manchu
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
. After graduating in 1902 he went to China for further study for two years, and on his return in 1904 he went on a study tour of England, France and Germany for a year. He was appointed a lecturer in Chinese at Saint Petersburg University in 1904, and he was made a professor Chinese and Manchu in 1915. In 1922 Ivanov was appointed as a senior
dragoman
A dragoman or Interpretation was an interpreter, translator, and official guide between Turkish-, Arabic-, and Persian-speaking countries and polities of the Middle East and European embassies, consulates, vice-consulates and trading posts. A ...
(interpreter) at the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
embassy in
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
.
In the summer of 1937, during the
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
, Ivanov was arrested and executed.
Scholarship
Ivanov was the first scholar to study the printed books and manuscripts written in the as yet undeciphered
Tangut script
The Tangut script ( Tangut: ; ) was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia dynasty. According to the latest count, 5863 Tangut characters are known, excluding variants. The Tangut character ...
that had been found in the abandoned city of
Khara-Khoto
Khara-Khoto (; mn, Khar Khot; "black city") is an abandoned city in the Ejin Banner of Alxa League in western Inner Mongolia, China, near the Juyan Lake Basin. Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Western Xia dynasty. It has b ...
in
Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...
by
Pyotr Kozlov
Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov (russian: Пётр Кузьми́ч Козло́в; 3 October 1863 in Dukhovshchina – 26 September 1935 in Peterhof) was a Russian and Soviet traveller and explorer who continued the studies of Nikolai Przhevalsky in ...
in 1908–1909. In autumn 1909 as many as 24,000 volumes of books and manuscripts in Chinese, Tangut and other languages, together with numerous archaeological artefacts, had been sent to the
Russian Geographical Society in Saint Petersburg by Kozlov. The books and manuscripts were subsequently moved to the Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences (now the
). Together with V. L. Kotvich (Władysław Kotwicz), a Polish scholar of
Mongolian and
Manchu
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
, Ivanov worked on the identification and preservation of the books and manuscripts from Khara-Khoto. Among these books Ivanov discovered a bilingual Chinese-Tangut glossary called the ''
Pearl in the Palm
The ''Pearl in the Palm'' or the ''Timely Pearl'' ( Tangut: ; ) is a bilingual glossary between the Chinese and Tangut languages. It survives as a single complete copy of a 12th-century woodblock printed book that was discovered in the Tangut ...
'' () which he realised was the key to deciphering the Tangut language. He later discovered three monolingual Tangut dictionaries and glossaries: ''Homophones'' (); ''Sea of Characters'' (); and ''Mixed Characters'' (). Based on the ''Pearl in the Palm'' and the other dictionaries, Ivanov was able to compile a dictionary of about 3,000 Tangut characters. The dictionary was completed in 1918, and deposited at the Asiatic Museum, where it remained until 1922, when Ivanov took it back. Due to the unstable political situation at the time, the dictionary was never published, and was not even known to Ivanov's most famous student,
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky (russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Не́вский; the surname is also transcribed Nevskij; 24 November 1937) was a Russian and Soviet linguist, an expert on a number of East Asian languages. H ...
, whose posthumous work, ''Tangut Philology'' (1960), laid the bedrock for modern Tangut scholarship. Ivanov's dictionary, which was at his home at the time of his arrest and execution in 1937, has never been seen since.
Works
* 1909. "Из находок П. К. Козлова в г. Хара-хото"
rom the finds of P. K. Kozlov at Kharakhoto
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
in ''Izvestiia Imperatorskogo Geograficheskogo obshchestva''
ulletin of the Imperial Geographical Society vol. XLV pp. * 1911. "Страница из истории Си-ся"
chapter in the history of Xixia in ''Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk''
ulletin of the Imperial Academy of Sciencespp. 831–836.
* 1909. "Zur Kenntniss der Hsi-hsia-Sprache"; in ''Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk''
ulletin of the Imperial Academy of Sciences series VI pp. 1221–1233.
* 1913. "Документы из города Хара-хото"
ocuments from Khara-khoto in ''Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk''
ulletin of the Imperial Academy of Sciences463–477.
* 1918. "Памятники тангутского письма"
angut manuscripts in ''Izvestiia Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk''
ulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences series VI pp. 1221–1233.
* 1920. "Monuments de l'écriture tangout"; in ''Journal Asiatique'', series XI pp. 107–109.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ivanov, Aleksei Ivanovich
1878 births
1937 deaths
Great Purge victims from Russia
Linguists from Russia
Russian lexicographers
Russian sinologists
Tangutologists